In 1859the Edinburgh City Mission’s Annual Report states that “A spirit of fervent prayer and of earnest ‘waiting for the promise of the Spirit’, has of late years pervaded, in a remarkable manner, many of the churches in town, and has found the means at once of its expression and its maintenance, in the Union Prayer Meeting, held in Queen St. Hall, and in similar devotional services conducted elsewhere.”
The same pattern occurred in Edinburgh as in much of Scotland, although this revival mostly impacted the working class. In Newhaven, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, a work similar to that described in Glasgow broke out among the tough fishing community in February 1860 at the close of a meeting, in which “a great weeping and crying began among the people. Many seemed truly to have been brought to Jesus. The whole place was moved. A beloved minister in the village supposed that at that time there were some “five hundred souls wailing after Christ.”” The above citation is part of an account of the 1859-61 revival which was put into a tract in the Monthly Visitor, and distributed throughout the land to 230,747 people in 1861, thus spreading the movement even more.
In Edinburgh, the missionaries were finding the same deep hunger for God, which startled them, for “Multitudes who would formerly have resented any direct inquiry respecting their state before God, began eagerly to court opportunities of being conversed with on this topic, and some would follow the missionary to his house, or accompany him in a walk to the country, pressing, in various forms, the momentous inquiry, ‘What must I do to be saved?’… Coarse and reckless men have become as little children entering the Kingdom; harlots have returned into the bosom of their wondering families, testifying of Jesus; the self-righteous and the secure are asking with burdened hearts, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’”
Edinburgh City Mission worked closely with Carrubbers Close Mission in the Royal Mile, which became the epicentre for the Edinburgh revival, under the leadership of the Free Church minister, Revd James Gall. Having been stirred by reports of the revival in Glasgow, the believers there renewed their enthusiasm for prayer. On 14th October 1859, “the shower came on” and an “extraordinary… work of grace” began. Multitudes of people seemed to be drawn to the mission like moths to a light as “night after night the careless became earnest, the earnest became convicted, and the convicted at length found peace in the blood of Jesus.”
By 1860 multitudes of people had been converted there and the crowds were so big that “hundreds had to be turned away”,resulting in a temporary move to the Theatre Royal, with extra meetings being put on. Finding again that this was too small, they had to move to the New Assembly Hall, above The Mound and next to the Royal Mile, which became “densely packed”and where queues of people came desperately seeking Christ. Working in conjunction with this great harvest of souls were the Free Church evangelist Brownlow North, Revd James Hood Wilson, and the English evangelists Reginald Radcliffe and Richard Weaver, who saw a large ingathering into the churches, including 125 prostitutes who were transformed.
“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14, NKJV).
Image: Fire: Oscar, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.